


Back in a Few

by KittyViolet



Series: More than 41 hours [2]
Category: Marvel 616, New Mutants (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Hotel Sex, Injury Recovery, Magic, Not a taxi, Reunions, Shower Sex, Suicidal Thoughts, Sunbathing, Tail Sex, Vaginal Fingering, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 18:49:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20068843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittyViolet/pseuds/KittyViolet
Summary: Illyana and Kitty are on vacation in New Orleans but Illyana has to step away for a work thing. She brings a bit too much of her work back with her.





	Back in a Few

I haven’t forgotten, but I’m not exactly used to it any more: when you’re in love with the ruler of Limbo—a realm where time doesn’t work as it does on this Earth—sometimes she has to go do some stuff in Limbo and you have to wait until she gets back if you want to do anything with her. And by “anything” I mean get dressed, have breakfast, go shopping, run a Danger Room session, learn basic Russian, or go into space. Or get back in bed and hide under the covers together.

After so much time apart—and such an, um, vigorous hourlong swim—that last one sounds good. (We’ve got the hotel room for another night.) But not—Illyana says—quite yet.

“Back in a few, K,” she says, combing out her straight hair, throwing her towel on our bed, and changing into her new uniform, the one with the boob window. I honestly kind of like the boob window. It’s part of her “My body is my own and I get to decide how much or how little you see” trip, a direction she’s been headed ever since…. I don’t know, at least since she came back. She calls me K now, which is new, and which I like, because it’s something nobody else calls me. “I know Emma told us to go on our own vacation, but there’s an emergency in Limbo.”

I shrug and squeeze her hand and she squeezes back. She manifests her soulsword before her portal—not gold this time but reddish-pink, like a sabra inside—opens up and she walks in.

I’m ready to wait an hour or a day but I’m really happy when another portal, vertical this time, opens up in the bathroom five minutes later and she walks back through, her soulsword drawn behind her before she lets it disappear. 

My happiness doesn’t quite last. She’s covered in green and grey and brown and pinkish-pale goop, and she’s bleeding from her shoulder and her forehead and both calves, there’s blood on her face, and her non-sword arm is crusted with half-dried blood, there’s a clump of something the color of blood on an eyebrow, and all across her shoulder, the one that’s not bleeding, there’s something that has both tentacles and a liver. She’s been through something, literally through something, as in: she had to run something through with a sword. Maybe several somethings.

She throws the tentacular something back into the portal, still quivering, before she lets the portal close, and then she pitches forward towards me, putting out one hand so we don’t touch right away, even though I’m coming towards her in case she falls.

I catch her by the shoulders anyway. “How much of that’s yours?” I ask, meaning the grime and goo and blood all over her.

“If you mean how much is my wounds,” she answers, “not much. You should see how the xothrightufryths look.

“If you mean how much is my doing,” she says, “absolutely all of it. And I’m not sorry. K, can you wait while I take a shower? The water pressure’s way better here than in that part of Limbo, plus the plumbing system over there is full of lead.”

I am not sorry to help my grime-bespattered, blood-caked, mud-caked, only a bit tired-looking best friend/ roomie/ now I guess we’re girlfriends again? into the Osborne Hotel’s lovely walk-in shower, which I have not seen before. Startling yellow-white-purple-black bands line the tile walls at chest- and waist-height, and there’s a kind of platform for people who want to sit down in the shower, for disability access and easier foot-cleaning and also for much easier shower-sharing.

I help Ilya get her boots off and start to unzip her costume, which has an unusual number of zippers this time out (I don’t have much experience with this costume), and at first she closes her eyes and lets me. Then she puts out her hand and says “Stop.”

I back off a bit and put one hand on the shower levers. “Ilya?”

“I should do the rest of this myself. I’m sorry. I should have told you.” She pauses. “You can start the shower. I’ll be out in a bit.” I turn the levers and three different jets of warm water begin to wash her shoulders and hair. The remaining clots of grime slide off her, slowly, along with the blood. Her skin heals fast. She looks directly at me. She looks amazing. And tough. And ready to fight anything.

She finishes taking the top of her costume off and stares at me, because I’ve been staring at her, because I like doing that sometimes. She raises her eyebrows at me and I don’t understand why, and then I remember that I’m in nothing but PJ bottoms, and the last time she saw me this way (not counting today or yesterday or three days ago) I was… younger and didn’t have all my curves yet. I think she likes what she sees.

I feel weak for a moment.

She smiles and closes her eyes and motions that I should really get out of the bathroom until she’s finished cleaning herself off.

*

I feel a bit weaker while I’m waiting for her; I put it down to anticipation. (Also maybe down to our earlier… vigorous swimming.)

When she’s out of the shower and I unwrap her from the thick hotel bath towel she looks strong and fair-haired and mischievous and ready to throw a javelin halfway across a city, or tie me to the ceiling and make me beg to be cut loose, or just wrestle me down and pin me to the bed with those straps we brought. Those last two sound enticing. I try to think whether I’d rather ask for the second or the third when her face falls. 

“Kitty,” she says. “What’s that on your ribs, right there?” 

I look down; there’s a spot of grime under my ribcage, and another beside my bellybutton. It must have come from helping her costume off.

My eyelids feel heavy.

“That’s bad,” she says, commandingly. “We need to get you clean immediately.” Before I can answer she’s hustling my polka-dot pajama bottoms off and marching me into the bathroom, still full of steam, on hand on my grime-free butt cheek, and turning on all the jets. She even takes out my earrings, gently but fast, and tosses them onto the flat part of the sink. Then she flicks her fingers and lights the PJs on fire until they're ash. Apparently the earrings-- all metal-- can stay.

I feel even weaker. Partly it’s because I like it when she treats me this way: when I can just give my body up to her. Partly it’s something else, though. Am I making it up, or am I feeling more and more tired, more and more down, even as she—and the jets—work hard to wash this clingy grime off? 

It gets paler on me, like it's trying to cling on. Something about the grime is telling me to go back to sleep, to crawl into bed, no, to crawl back under the ground. Is it worth it, this life? the grime asks me. You just think she loves you. You just think that all your friends love you when really they just need you. Life is need. It’s so easy to get tired; life is exhausting. Crawl into bed and don’t wake up. Don’t need anything. Don’t be a bother. You’ve always been a bother. Who needs friends? Yours don’t need you. You’re always being rescued… you almost killed Erik…your friends can do better than you. The only good thing you did was get lost in space.

I close my eyes. I mumble something that isn’t English or Yiddish or Hebrew or Russian or anything and try to duck out of the shower, but Ilya steadies me and places my limp body back among the water jets, and their warmth, and her warmth, and I can’t even interpret what she’s saying, but whatever it is, it makes me want to stay alive and awake at least long enough to hear more. I start to phase and then she tells me not to phase and I turn solid again with some effort and let the jets cover me.

“Kitty,” she says. “Stay here.” Usually that means she’ll be back in a few. This time it means she’s not going anywhere. Emotionally or literally.

To herself she says “I shouldn’t have let you even try to help me clean up.” And then, to me, “I knew the xothrightufryth was bad, but not that bad. And you don’t have my immunities.” And then, “It’s a four-part remedy. I’ve done it before.” 

“What’s the first part?” I ask, mournfully. “This,” she says.

Then she says something else, something that’s all consonants and feels good to hear. It sounds the way a cup of coffee first thing in the morning, after I’ve already slept in, feels. At the same time Illyana’s moving all her fingers in the air, in every compass direction, and there’s a stick of wood between her hands that wasn’t there before, and she breaks the stick in half. Both halves shrink into nothingness as they fall, before they reach the ground.

“What’s the second part?” I ask, slurring and warm. I no longer feel like life isn’t worthwhile, but I’m still very sleepy; I’m enjoying it, though, because she’s scrubbing under my arms, and under my breasts, and around my midriff and waist and over my thighs and in between, first with a washcloth (the washcloth glows blue; it’s enchanted) and then with her slow, careful fingers and thumbs.

“Last time you washed me,” she says. “It’s time for me to wash you. K, this is the second part.”

How can I be so tired, still, when she’s the one who defeated the xothrightufryths? And why do I know exactly what xothrightufryths are? (They have tentacles, and not the cute octopus kind.)

Then I know. It’s a creature that wants to spread itself into this Earth, and it corrupts whatever it touches, hollowing out its victims from the inside, first with fatigue and sadness and then with a spirit control, till they erupt and spread grime directly. Like the Brood, if the Brood were also a contagious mood disorder. They’re not all that hard to defeat, if you’re Illyana, who is just as immune to that sort of mood-based attack as she is to telepathy (that is, it works on her zero days out of seven). But the goo when one is hacked apart…. still dangerous. Unless your girlfriend is Illyana.

“Does this feel good?” she says. It does. Oh, it does. I’m not sad. But I’m still very sleepy. “The mood lifts first. The rest of the counterspell takes longer.” I like feeling sleepy. For now. But I’d like to wake up. Maybe Ilya can wake me up?

Ilya, her hair still wet, shuts off the shower. She runs her hand through my wet hair, her index finger down my left side, from earlobe to butt-cheek to instep. “Do you feel clean?” she says. “Clean and wet?” I nod twice. 

“Now part three,” she says, and lifts me up—I love it when she lifts me up; I wonder if she’s going to tie me up, but instead she wraps me in a fresh towel and moves my grown-woman-sized body, still in her arms, out the door and into the elevator. She’s wearing sleeveless black T-shirt, and cutoffs, and she found time to comb her hair out straight.

A couple older than us, with two massive suitcases, get on the elevator and stare. “Bad night for your friend there?” one asks Ilya.

“You have no idea,” she says firmly. They get off at the next floor, whispering together.

It’s at least possible that my towel partly slipped off and anyone can see the sensitive parts of me. The idea makes me giggle a little. I’m still not strong enough to stand up and I don’t think I can put the towel back without help. Maybe Illyana can help?

I try to run my free hand through her hair, which would make my towel fall off all the way, so she puts my hand back where it belongs, across my own chest, and realigns her arms, one under my hips, one under my head. “Where are we going?” I ask. “What’s part three?” 

The elevator is going up. “Might ask for your help with the next part,” she says, “though I don’t need it.”

The elevator passes floor 18, floor 21, floor 23, the floor marked P, and opens at the floor marked R. It’s a tile-floored, drywalled chamber with a padlocked metal door.

“Through the door, please, if you can, for both of us,” she says, still holding me in both arms. God, she’s strong.

I phase both of us and she walks us both through the door. Her eyes turn red, then yellow, then their usual nearly-clear blue. I’m exhausted again but I want to stay awake at least long enough for me to text my friends in Weschester and my friends at Scott’s new school and my friends in England before I go back to sleep for years and years. Also I want Illyana to kiss me.

Instead she puts me down, still partly wrapped in the thick fluffy towel, on the white asphalt roof. She’s barefoot. If she weren’t Illyana her feet would be burning up. She’s Illyana. She’s fine.

“This is part three,” she says, adding some sort of cantrip—her left hand glows orange. She no longer sounds like she regrets anything: she knows that the treatment, whatever it is, will succeed. She unwraps the towel so that I’m lying on top of it, sunbathing, nude.

It’s a hot day in New Orleans. Two days ago we were moving, in snowy weather, into a fortified base in the Canadian Rockies. The sun on every part of me feels great.

“I can give you another tour of the mansion,” I say, drowsing. “We can hang out on the roof and catch some sun and then find the pool.”

“Uh-huh.” Ilya strokes my hair with what must be a comb, spreading out the tangles. I like that my hair has natural waves and curls, but I don’t want it tangled up. I feel too weak to take the comb from my roommategirlfriend and then I don’t. 

I move my right hand, uncertainly, towards the comb. I’ve never minded the beach but I’ve never loved it the way I love sunbathing, nude, with her, right now. I don’t care who’s watching. Someone must be watching. The Osborne isn’t the tallest building in New Orleans; it’s not even the tallest hotel, and there’s a rooftop café on one of them, I’m sure. My roommatefriendnewgirlfriend is dressed enough to go out in public, barely. I’m just… bare.

There’s one more part of the xothrightufryth still around me: I can see it now, like a gross moldy cotton blanket under the good ones, the smooth and warm ones I get from Illyana’s counterspell, from water, from sun. 

I roll over on my side and it’s like throwing the gross blanket off and pulling the nice one closer. “Guided tour, roomie?” I ask, and it feels great to get the words out. My head’s in her lap now, my legs still extended along the towel.

“Absolutely,” she says. “Wait, is it your birthday?”

“No,” I say. “Just… I think I’m having another extraordinarily good day. Whoops.” I almost fall asleep in her lap. The counterspell hasn’t worked all its magic yet, or else I’m not entirely recovered from our poolside adventure this morning. I wonder what else must be done. I don’t care. I like this feeling, just enough energy to stay here, and maybe eat a beignet when I get hungry. Bed before food. I realize I’ve been licking my lips.

Something bursts like a raincloud, but smaller and closer, above me, and Illyana’s expression changes completely. “BEGONE!” she barks at the cloud—it’s the same gray-green as the goo we washed off ourselves in the room—and it turns into harmless rain.

My best friend takes a deep breath. She’s saved us again. “That’s the last of it, Kitty. I’m extraordinarily good. No. Almost good. Were you quoting me, just now?”

“I think I was. Can I give you a guided tour?” I hope she remembers the tour I once gave her of the mansion on my birthday, the tour she asked for, so I could get a birthday party. I remember every minute, and well.

“What do you—oh. Yes. I like this tour. Even better than the last one.”

I’m starting this tour where I already am, taking out my tongue and licking her denim cutoffs, and her thighs around the cutoffs, until she unbuttons them: I lick the metal buttons and the denim and the skin and hair under the denim, and then I phase them all the way off so that they land beside her and her hips are bare on the towel, we’re both exposed in the afternoon sun, except for her T-shirt, and I lick and tongue and lick while she holds me in place. It’s like lapping up pure creek water, it’s like losing myself, I get more awake and sleepier at once. 

I speed up till she tells me to slow down, and then she tries to move my head away and my hand to the space where my tongue had been, and instead I fall back down onto the towel, onto my back, until she slides next to me and we both turn on our sides, almost face to face, so I can put my hand where she wants it to go, without sitting up. 

I can move my hand, my fingers, my tongue, my head but I’m not quite there with my arms and my legs yet. But it doesn’t matter right now. I don’t care, I have my hand moving around her and then just almost but not quite inside her, opening up that wet space along with her, and she’s bucking against my palm, gently and then less gently, with her own hand on herself. 

The base of my palm makes pressure on her perineum and she opens up to permit it. I love this part. I squeeze her thighs and her butt as she touches herself, as she licks my forehead and kisses me, her tongue’s a bit raspy, it’s like she’s marking me. “I saved the universe,” her tongue says to my forehead, to my nose, to my lips, to my tongue, without speech, “and I saved you again, and you’re mine, mine,” and that’s exactly who I want to be. Ilya’s. Ilya’s.

We hold each other as close as we can without taking pressure off my hand underneath her, without taking pressure off her hand as her own hand moves back and forth, up and down. She’s wet now. We’re almost touching there too. I can feel my own wetness where I want it, with nothing to stop me flowing, flowing out, for the world to see. I want to touch myself but instead I keep holding her as if I were lifting her up, applying pressure, kissing her, she’s on her side with her hand on herself, she speeds up—

There's her tail. She must have kept it from view until now, whenever it manifested, but now it's fully out, and it's thrashing around like a cat's when the cat is very, very happy. Sometimes I touch its tip. This time the tail slaps me on the thigh, with a sound like the flat crack of a whip. I love it. I want to be slapped again.

When she comes it’s like a crack of lightning inside me, and I come too, which seems like it should be impossible—no one’s touching my parts, not even me, and her tail's only slapping my outer thigh—but I do come, I come fast, I clench inside, and I love it, and she clenches around my hand and curls that tail around me, and I close my eyes, and when I open them the sun seems brighter than ever, even though it’s close to sunset. 

I have not, I realized with some relief, phased through the roof.

Also I can move all my limbs, easily. 

"Did I sleep?" I ask.

"For a minute or two, roomie," Ilya says. "OK, maybe closer to thirty minutes."

“What was part—“ I start to ask Ilya, once she opens her own eyes, and then I stop.

“That was,” she says. “Beignets?”

“Not naked,” I say, realizing that whoever was watching us might still be watching us.

“Who’s going to stop us?” she says as she stands up, still wearing nothing but a T-shirt. I bet she was practicing shellwork while I slept. Either that or thinking about the toys in the room that we still haven't used.

“Naked beignets, then shopping?” I propose. “I need some new sleepwear.”

“Sounds good,” and she waves her hands and makes a nest of sky-blue fire in the air before she walks to the elevator, and when the nest dissipates after a couple of seconds she’s got a scandalously short black-and-white T-shirt dress and white mules, and I’ve got a belted silver-and-blue romper that tells the world I’ve got curves where I do, and hides the curves I don’t have where I don’t, and canvas walking shoes with a neat zigzag pattern. Also my hair feels like it’s just been styled. Wavy and firm.

“We’re still naked, aren’t we?” I say.

“Yes,” Illyana says. “But we look clean.”

The place with the best beignets is ten blocks away. But my girlfriend is not a taxi. We phase back into the antechamber and she summons the elevator. We’re going to have a lovely quiet walk. And an extraordinarily good day.

**Author's Note:**

> For "extraordinarily good" and the gear in the bedroom, see chapter three of "41 Hours" by Magik3. For Kitty and Illyana's tour of the mansion, see the backup story to Special Edition X-Men #1.


End file.
